A Featured Poet at The Record Vault on Nov 25th

The Record Vault is where you go in Toronto when you are looking for vinyl music - seriously! Album city! It is also the locale for a new series of monthly poetry readings organized by Nik Beat. And coming up on Sunday November 25th, from 3 -5pm, are three featured readers, Penelope J. Smith, Jennifer Hosein and me, Brenda Clews! Inviting everyone who is in Toronto or who can make it here to come and hear us! Mark it on your calendars. Ok?!!

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Keesha and Aria

The kitten, Aria, was sleeping on my lap - on a down sleeping bag beside a portable oil heater. Cat heaven, no? No. When I patted the old dog, Keesha, who was sleeping further down the couch the kitten noticed, and she immediately went and curled up with her favourite.

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AROS (A River of Stones) for Nov 1

I sit before a large painting I am ready to trash to fret about my feelings towards it. Soon I am slapping paint all over the canvas.

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Tentative Ghost Under a Green Moon

The Tentative Ghost.

But..... under a green moon. Yes, it is (green).

Have a spooky day!




Tentative Ghost Under a Green Moon, 2012, Charcoal, India and acrylic inks, Moleskine Folio Sketchbook A4, 8" x 12", 21cm x 29.7cm. (His ink lines are black and I'm not sure why the scanner read them as brown - unable to colour correct without changing the colours in the whole drawing.)

He smiles, doesn't he? A debonair skeleton, perhaps on a date, 'Where would you like to go for dinner, dear? Or how about a wine bar with a plate of appetizers?' He only needs a black top hat, a tuxedo starch white bow tie.... ::giggling here::

He is drawn from an actual mini skeleton model. Drawing our bones while listening to newscasts of the flooding and destruction of the massive storm that blew in on the East Coast of the US, and in south Ontario and Quebec in Canada.

Yesterday's iPhone pic of the sketch with a Camera+ 'Grunge' filter.



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Poetry Reading and Music at The Record Vault

Went to Poetry Reading and Open Mic this afternoon at The Record Vault, featuring Gadist poets, Nik Beat, Brandon Pitts and Stedmond Pardy, Vanessa McGowan and Laura DeLeon... with Laura L'Rock and Crushed Ice… great readings, music, and it was crowded. I did my recent 'Palmistry, a Psalm' on Open Mic, and will be a featured poet next month. So that'll be nice. Looks like I might be on Nik's radio show 'Howl' on CIUT in December too. A great group of poets and musicians who I really enjoy hanging out with.

My little 10 min sketch of Stedmond Pardy performing poetry at The Record Vault last Sunday. (I misspelled his name! O, sorry! Will have to correct that.) Along with a Record Vault photo of the three featured poets that afternoon.

9" x 7", charcoal on archival paper (drawn there), then set with GAK100 (at home).

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Gabrielle Roth 1941-2012

'Our Mama Raven's wings have lifted her spirit from this lifetime and she is in flight to her next journey, where she will dance in our hearts forever.'

Gabrielle Roth 1941-2012

-Jonathan A Horan, her son, 5 Rhythms Global

She touched me in such deep ways as I cannot express. Raven, in your deep stillness, fly with the spirit...

I only took one three day workshop in Toronto with her, but I've danced her dance for 15 years. What that dancing did for me is inestimable. I read her books, too. I carried her teachings in the innermost part of me. And I danced with a freedom I didn't know was possible. She taught me to be who I am, on the dance floor, in my life. I can't express how tremendous this gift was or how gifted a teacher Gabrielle Roth was.



The best video I've seen of her work. This is how I understand 5Rhythms, and the dance practice that I have practiced for 15 years. Sad, and incredibly grateful to her for the gift of free-form dance.

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One of the Walking Narratives

This drawing is in my writing Moleskine since my art one is finished. It began as a doodle but became quite a complex drawing. The figure is... well, divide it in half and see.*

 

One of the Walking Narratives, 2012, 21cm x 29cm, 8" x 11.5", graphite, India and acrylic inks in a Moleskine journal.

Written into the drawing:

CINDERBLOCKS OF TIME
DON'T WAIT FOR ME

moments
redeem
themselves

baby
you are
a walking
NARRATIVE

OIL
MAN
OIL WOMAN
OILMANOILW
OMAN OIL MA
N OIL WO
MANOILWOMA
NOILMANOIL
WOMANOILMAN
OILMANOIL

always there
should be
reeds blowing
in the
wind

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*hint: I wanted to do a half woman/half man figure and am surprised at how uncanny the image is. You have to hold the straight edge of something, an envelope or a pen, on that blue dividing line, and look either way. To my eye, it's not a manifestation of the same figure in two sexes, but two similar yet different figures who are combined as one.

One of the potential titles had been, Man On the Edge of Becoming Woman, or Woman on the Edge of Becoming Man. In many ways, we are both.